“No, I’m just helping Susie:  she can’t get any plan to suit her.”

“Why don’t you call on me, Susie?  Let me have a pencil and a scrap of paper:  I can plan a house in the half of no time.”

“Here,” Susan answered, furnishing the required materials, and enjoying, meanwhile, the thought of the discomfiture which, as she felt sure, awaited these volunteer architects.

“Do see mother’s plan!” laughed Gertrude after a while, peeping over that lady’s shoulder.  “Her kitchen is large enough for a prosperous livery-stable, and it has ten windows; and here’s the parlor—­nothing but a goods-box; and she hasn’t any way of gettin; to the second floor.”

“Put in an elevator,” said Brother Tom.

This drew Gertrude’s attention to Tom’s sketch, so she went across, and looked it over.  Man-like, he had left out of his plan everything in the way of a pantry or closet, though he had a handsome smoking-room and a billiard-hall.

Not at all disconcerted by the criticisms of his plan, Tom proceeded with wonderful contrivance to run a partition with his pencil across one end of his roomy smoking apartment for pantry and ladies’ clothes-presses.

“That’s just like a man,” Gertrude said.  “He’d have all the dishes and all the ladies’ dresses toted through the smoking-room.”

“Well, see here,” Tom said:  “I can take closets off this bedroom;” and the division-line was quickly run.

“And, pray, whose bedroom is that supposed to be?” Gertrude asked.  “It might answer for a retired bachelor who has nothing to store but an extra shirt:  it wouldn’t do for a young lady with such hoops as they wear these days.  She couldn’t squeeze in between the bed and washstand to save her flounces.  You ain’t an architect, Tom:  that’s certain.”

“Well, now, let’s see your plan,” challenged the gentleman; and he began to read from Gertrude’s paper:  “‘Parlor, sewing-room—­’ Now that’s extravagant, Gert.  I think your women-folks might get along without a special sewing-room.  Why can’t they sew in the dining-room?”

“That’s handsome, and very gallant,” answered Gertrude.  “Your men can have a billiard-room and a smoking-room, while my poor women can’t even have a comfortable place for darning the men’s stockings and sewing on their shirt-buttons.  Oh, men are such selfish creatures!”

“Well, now,” said Brother Tom, “I’ll leave it to Susie if those tenants of hers can afford to have a special sewing-room.”

“And I’ll leave it to Susie if—­”

But Susan interrupted her:  “You and Tom must settle your disputes without my help.  There, now!  I think I have my plan decided upon at last.  After a hundred and one trials I believe I have a faultless sketch.”

“Let’s see it,” said one and another, all gathering about the speaker.

Susan explained her plan.  The only objection to it came from the mother.  She was afraid if things were made so dreadful handy the folks would get to be lazy; and, anyhow, there wasn’t any use in having things so nice in a rented house:  they’d get put out of kilter right away.